This article analyses the effectiveness of the EU's promotion of democratic governance through functional co-operation in the European neighbourhood. In a comparative study of three policy sectors in three countries (Moldova, Morocco, and Ukraine), we show that the EU is capable of inducing neighbouring countries to adopt policy-specific democratic governance provisions in the absence of accession conditionality. In line with the institutionalist hypotheses, we find that effective rule adoption can be secured by strong legal specification of democratic governance elements in the EU sectoral acquis and international conventions. However, successful rule adoption does not necessarily lead to rule application.